SHOULD A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE HAVE TO UNDERGO PSYCHOLOGICAL, POLI SCI/CIVICS, TESTING?

[jennygirl]

The article below I submitted to several online magazines and instead of responding to mine (from an industrial/psychological) viewpoint of Bush's Efficacy they keep quoting that very narrow (psychoanalytically inclined) viewpoint on his job performance -- which, by the way, falls outside his level of expertise like I/O Psych. Anyway, DU friends read it for yourselves and tell me what you think about it. It is lengthy but on target.

SHOULD A PRESIDENT UNDERGO MENTAL HEALTH, IQ, AND
POLITICAL SCIENCE/CIVICS AND BASIC ETIQUETTE EXAMS?


By Jennifer T. McCray, M,A.


Considering the vast duties required of the currently selected president George W. Bush, it is only fair that he and every other president after him (as he has been dubbed by many as
“the worst president in history” both nationally and internationally) be administered various. Ironically he strongly endorses the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) testing for all children (thus robbing them of acquiring critical thinking skills and forcing teachers to instruct according to the tests themselves) and making them automatons in the process. As you can imagine, Bush himself steadfastly and hypocritically disdains any form of testing reflecting his own abilities – as
he regards himself above such mundane things. However, deep down it appears (based on my observation as a master’s level Industrial/Organizational Psychology professional) that he knows that the will fail any such tests.

The above instruments that would exhibit the core competencies for his job are the
WAIS (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale – which assess his IQ), the MMPI-2 (Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inventory – which assesses any mental illness or psychopathy),
a high school-level political science/civics and geography exit exams. Interestingly, some of the government agencies such as the CIA and FBI use these assessments on some of their more secretive agents. If this is so, why is it that the chief-executive-officer of the U.S. not mandated to take these tests? As you can see these requirements are not too much to ask of someone given the power of ruling the world’s superpower? The pettiness, arrogance, and vindictiveness are very dangerous in a leader such as Bush is overwhelming. It demonstrates how destructive he is in this very valuable position, for he is so blinded that he is incapable of exercising rational judgment in worldly matters.

Yet another reason that I believe strongly that he should have at least have the mental and
IQ tests is the he appears to be suffering from a condition known as Wernicke-Korsakoff
According to the DSM-IV-TR, it is a “feature of long-term alcohol(and other substance abuse) –
remember it has been stated the Bush heavily abused alcohol ( allegedly cocaine) for many decades that impairs cognitive functioning which involve the following: language disturbance
(this explains his inability to string together a coherent sentence without repeated coaching by his staff and his ineffectiveness in answering spontaneous questions from reporters who have not been screened), his difficulty in carrying out basic motor skills (his frequent falls from his bike and Air Force One and the infamous pretzel incident in which he claimed to be choking) deficits in planning, organization, and abstraction (everything has to be presented to him in the simplest, most concrete manner), his extremely rigid mind set (the inability to take risks), his perseverance (his unwillingness to change from one task to the other (such as his “stay-the-course” belief in continuing the Iraq War despite facts that prove otherwise) and his confabulation (making up stories or “facts” to cover up his forgetfulness or lack of knowledge on an issue).





In conclusion, anyone can clearly see that his poor job performance and overall disqualification for his position, George W. Bush should be the last president who can get away with being the most ignorant, inarticulate, personality-disordered, and generally crass president in
American history, for he is an utter embarrassment to most. In fact, displayed his crassness in the
2006 G-8 convention in which he yelled, “Yo, Tony (Blair) or whomever with his mouth full of food. Additionally, if that weren’t bad enough, he had the audacity to sneak up behind Germany’s Prime Minister Angela Merkel and began massaging her shoulders, much to the disbelief of the Prime Minister herself and the other world leaders who witnessed this disgraceful behavior. It looks like we should all chip in and purchase an Emily Post Guide to Etiquette
to study during one of his numerous vacations to Crawford, Camp David, or northern Maine.
It is indeed a sad commentary when a president has such offensive manners that he makes
rural or inner-city people look like world ambassadors.

[havocmom]

1. Yes, and it is the job of the citizens to administer the examinations

Democracy is not a spectator sport. People are coming around to seeing that.

Now, media, on the other hand...

[pitohui]

2. they would cheat

their candidates always have severe deficits such as alzheimer' (reagan), active drug use (poppy), and weinecke-karsokoff syndrome (*) but they just lie about it until it's too late to matter because the puppermasters who run that party need stupid easily managed puppets with heads made of straw

whereour our candidates do something normal like get a blowjob from an admirer and suddenly they're sexual fiends or some such because we actually try to elect the guy who is running the country, instead of a figurehead

we can't win this game, it's why we had to get rid of poll tests -- the black guy gets the test asking him to translate the new york times into the original latin, the white guy gets the test asking him if cat is spelled cee ay tee

[JackRiddler]

3. absolutely not

The people should have to undergo a basic education in history, politics, psychology, logic, rhetoric and critical thinking, at least to the point where they don't need a test to spot a fraud as obvious as GWB. Oh yeah, theoretically that's what they're supposedly getting in their state-required 10-12 years of education. But in practice it's been operation dumb down.

[bowens43]

8. Nope.

None of that is required. The Constitution spells out the requirements. We don't need more.

[madmunchie]

4. Nice try, but there are still people ON THIS BOARD who support candidates with little to no

Qualifications.

Maybe we need to test the voters to see if they really know what and whom they are voting for.

[leftstreet]

16. That would be an interesting test

:popcorn:

[illinoisprogressive]

5. Before 2000 I would think that silly. Now I think it essential

[aquart]

9. And a test for known forms of brain damage, too, please.

Transparency about presidential health should absolutely include mental health.

[Eurobabe]

21. Precisely.

I agree. The need one of them fancy MRIs and brain scans to see what the frontal lobes are doing. Test them under diress, waterboard their asses to see if they can TAKE IT.

[tom_paine]

40. My thoughts exactly. Yet still I am troubled by the concept.

Who will administer the testing? How will it be kept unbiased? What about other forms of test abuse?

Would it be given to all Primary Candidates before declaring or just to the winner.

And IF these tests detect some disqualifying deficiency, what if said Pres.-elect doesn't wish to obey the law?

Bushler shows quite clearly that such is easily possible, that America would elect (or come close enough to elect that it could be stolen) someone who really f*cking HATED the concept of America.

Like Bushler.

What THEN? Or more accurately, how many people would Bushler imprison, ruin or have killed in "suicides", "accidents" and of course, "terrorist attacks" if a serious attempt was made at impeachment?

At least a dozen, possibly hundreds, possibly tens of thousands in a Bush-orchestrated 9/11 #2 with nukes (though I would like to think that Busheviks would be morally incapable of such behavior, based on previous Bushler behavior, I would be a fool to rule out the possibility of them being able to do this and easily live with it).

[Cleita]

6. I have often wondered why candidates for any office shouldn't

go through a screening just like job applicants have to. I have had to do IQ tests, psychological tests, skills tests as well as having the education background and experience in my field. I even at one time I had to take a polygraph test to find out if I was honest.

It would seem that we should screen our wannabe public officials first before they put their hat in the ring for election to determine if they at least have a minimum ability to do the job.

[bowens43]

7. No. Of course not. The qualifications are:

1. be a natural born Citizen
2. attained to the Age of thirty-five Years
3. been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States

and to have been elected

This is all that is required and all that should be required. Period.

[Bill McBlueState]

35. heck, why even have three?

Some people argue for an amendment that dispenses with #1, and the precise numbers in the remaining qualifications could be revisited.

[Aviation Pro]

10. A NEO-PI and CogScreen would help too.....

....

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

11. Absolutely Not.

After the generic qualifications, there is only one test necessary, and that's whether or not you can convince 60-70 million people to vote for you or not.

[northofdenali]

12. Absolutely, numerous psych exams.

And if they can't identify the nations they want to invade and occupy to their profit, tough.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. Well, it would sure winnow the field of candidates.

Considering the pathological egomania essential to politicians, there would be very few candidates emerging from the seats of power.

[jennygirl]

14. I Wanted to Add Something Else

Although, I am not sure what are the employment laws in the host country where the G-8 Convention was held. What Bush did to Germany's PM Angela Merkel could constitute a charge of sexual harassment by her reaction and embarrassment here in the U.S. He really does need to have read to him that Emily Post Rules of Etiquette Book and The Ugly American by Pearl S. Buck.

I still disagree with you who believe that the Constitution should be the only qualification criteria for a president. After all, look what it got us now and remember ALL of those men who drafted it were HIGHLY INTELLIGENT and emotionally fit for their job. They are probably rolling over in their graves at how low the standards of the presidential office has become. The Constitution can always be amended as in the 14th amendement giving slaves personhood. Also, the people don't need to be tested they need intellectually and psychologically qualified leaders to lead the. So, the talk about leading to the testing of voters is an apples and oranges issue. Bush has shown us that this should never EVER happen in U.S. history again (we were lucky with Carter and Clinton possessing those aforementioned characteristics).

[fishwax]

15. Um ... no.

I like that the public gets to decide whether a candidate is fit for office.

[MonkeyFunk]

17. No

it would require a constitutional amendment to institute such things, and I can't see how one could possibly be fairly-written.

Nor do I think changing such basic things about the constitution is warranted by one dumb-ass president. We've survived bad presidents before, and we'll survive this one.

[Hekate]

18. The campaign and debates allegedly are for that purpose. Too bad the debates aren't debates anymore.

Nice thought about testing candidates' qualifications in other ways, but the system isn't set up for that. Really, for two centuries it's been run on trust -- the trust that the voting public would by and large be able to cull out the bad ones on their own, and the trust that no cabal would ever put a sociopathic puppet into the Oval Office for their personal gain.
:shrug:

We shall live to see better days than these.

Hekate

[and-justice-for-all]

19. If I have to take test for emplyment...

..So should anyone that wants to run an entire country. A piss test too!

[orleans]

20. typos

"be administered various." (various what?)
"he knows that the will fail" (that *he*)

2nd paragraph
"chief-executive-officer of the U.S. not mandated" (U.S. *is* not mandated)
"As you can see these requirements are not too much to ask of someone given the power of ruling the world’s superpower?" (cut. shouldn't be a question anyway. maybe your reader cannot see and you assume they do agree w/you. also--you phrase it as if we are the only superpower in the world--that is a matter of opinion)
"The pettiness, arrogance, and vindictiveness are very dangerous in a leader such as Bush is overwhelming." (very awkward--phrased wrong and again you're assuming your reader agrees that bush is petty, arrogant & vindictive. and the fact that these traits are dangerous is another assumption--prove how they can be dangerous--what empirical evidence do you have that these might be dangerous traits in a leader?)
"It demonstrates how destructive he is in this very valuable position, for he is so blinded that he is incapable of exercising rational judgment in worldly matters." (what demonstrates how destructive he is? prove he is "so blinded" (there is no proof). and again, it is your opinion that his judgments are not rational--you have not documented how a rational person would respond or has responded and to what? )

3rd paragraph:
"that he should have at least have" (i believe it might sound more professional if you said: that he should at least have. )

okay--i'm done. i'm not going any further. i can't stand bush either, jennygirl, but your article is not professionally written (you haven't even proofed it). you have a masters in i/o psych? i only have a ba (but i majored in psych, and loved writing research papers). do your homework, back up what you're saying, show documentation, reference other studies that have been conducted. get your anger out. and then start the paper over. and proof it before you submit it.

[jennygirl]

25. Thanks for Alerting Me on the Typos

Orleans,

As you know, it is easier to have typos on a computer screen than on other media in which you can physically/visually see (such as on a sheet of paper). In that respect, you are correct. My mind works 50 times faster than my brain. I have snail mailed ALL of my articles because of this problem and have never had any editor of a magazine or newspaper that have published any of work express dissatisfaction on grammatical grounds. Despite the typo/computer screen visual/spatial problem, I stand by my argument about the subject.

[orleans]

28. i agree w/you on the subject. but remember--the same moron that

your article describes as someone without tact or manners is the same jerk that so many in this country said they would like to have a beer with!

and while i'm on that subject--maybe your article should include some sort of test regarding his alcoholism or to determine who, in the future, is an alcoholic or a self "recovering" alcoholic.


did you read dr. justin franks book: bush on the couch? if not then i highly recommend it. (find out why this sociopath has no form of empathy--possibly due to the fact that when his sister died he was not told about it for a period of time....and they never had a funeral and his wicked parents went golfing rather than have a funeral for their daughter! also read how little georgie got off sticking firecrackers up the butts of frogs and watching them explode.)

and it's not just bush.

"The reason that George W. Bush insists that "victory" is achievable in Iraq is not because he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised. No, it's that his definition of "victory" is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and on-line. For Bush, victory is indeed at hand. It could come at any moment now, could already have been achieved by the time you read this. And the driving force behind his planned "surge" of American troops is the need to preserve those fruits of victory that are now ripening in his hand.

"At any time within the next few days, the Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve a new "hydrocarbon law" essentially drawn up by the Bush Administration and its UK lackey, the Independent on Sunday reports. The new bill will "radically redraw the Iraqi oil industry and throw open the doors to the third-largest oil reserves in the world," say the paper, whose reporters have seen a draft of the new law. "It would allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil companies in the country since the industry was nationalized in 1972." If the government's parliamentary majority prevails, the law should take effect in March.

"As the paper notes, the law will give Exxon, BP, Shell and other carbon cronies of the White House unprecedented sweetheart deals, allowing them to pump gargantuan profits from Iraq's nominally state-owned oilfields for decades to come. This law has been in the works since the very beginning of the invasion – indeed, since months before the invasion, when the Bush Administration brought in Phillip Carroll, former CEO of both Shell and Fluor, the politically-wired oil servicing firm, to devise "contingency plans" for divvying up Iraq's oil after the attack. Once the deed was done, Carroll was made head of the American "advisory committee" overseeing the oil industry of the conquered land, as Joshua Holland of Alternet.com has chronicled in two remarkable reports on the backroom maneuvering over Iraq's oil: Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil and The U.S. Takeover of Iraqi Oil.

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=19344

and this article (above) ends with this:

"So Bush's confident strut, his incessant upbeat pronouncements about the war, his complacent smirks, his callous indifference to the unspeakable horror he has unleashed in Iraq – these are not the hallmarks of self-delusion, or willful ignorance, or a disassociation from reality. He and his accomplices know full well what the reality is – and they like it."

check it out. it's worth reading.

[Vidar]

22. yes.

[ohio2007]

23. Wouldn't that take an act of congress to pass ? Good luck

finding a messenger to deliver that one for consideration.

[Bill McBlueState]

36. it would take a Constitutional amendment.

See Article 2, section 1: http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Article2

[madokie]

24. a fair honest election would make that not an issue

thats all

[Madspirit]

26. immoral

Some of the best candidates and people I know would show as having a mental illness if given these various psychological tests, including Abraham Lincoln.

I know the couch from both sides and let me tell you, I challenge anyone here to not show up with something. As someone with a mental illness myself, I find this highly offensive. MOST people have some degree or some form of what could be technically defined as a mental illness.

I like the crazy and creative people of the world. ...wouldn't trade them for all the milquetoast in town.

Having a treatable mental illness should not disqualify someone anymore than having diabetes should and screw anyone who says else-wise. ...and several of our presidents ON BOTH SIDES have had diagnosable and treatable mental illnesses.

Let's just have morals and demand morality from out politicians and pay attention to what they say and do and vote accordingly and not use this new little idiot thing as a New Funny Thing to Say About Bush because it's discriminatory and offensive.
Madspirit

[jennygirl]

27. I Have A Mental Illness Myself But Chose Another Field

Madspirit,

I myself have bipolar disorder -- which is why I know I will never have the emotional fitness for some positions. For example, I wanted to be a psychiatrist. I had a good chance because I worked as a research associate at a medical school, but I knew the chaotic pace of medical school and residency combined with my rapidly cycling moods would be detrimental to the patients that I treated and that my professional judgment depending on my mood might be questionable. So, I chose another profession (psychology)where the creativity aspect of my disorder would be beneficial to me and society. Also, when referring to mental illness I was talking about the harmful ones like sociopathy and pathological narcissism which are destructive to society. Conditions such as major depression, bipolar disorder (if closely monitored), and ADD/ADHD can often make for a better worker in certain occupations.

[jennygirl]

32. I Know for I have Bipolar Disorder Myself

Madspirit,

I was not trying to say that all people with a mental illness need not be a president. For example, people with conditions such as sociopathy and pathological narcississim are extremely destructive when they are given positions of leadership (as is what is happening here now). However, people with major depressive disorder (which Lincoln suppostedly had), bipolar disorder, and ADD/ADHD are often some of the best and most creative people in their occupations.


I myself wanted to be a psychiatrist and was told by my boss (who served on the board of the medical school where I worked as a research associate) that I could easily get in based on all my academic achievements and excellent work performance in the field. However, my psychiatrists told me that I might have a problem completing medical school. Looking back, they were right. Due to my rapidly cycling moods and my questional judgment depending on what mood I might be in during medical school and treating patients, I knew that I couldn't do it. So, I settled on psychology because it best benefited me and society. Also, mental a illness and IQ scores should be factors in which to assess the individual -- not the sole determining factors.

[praeclarus]

33. self delete, replied to wrong post...

[Madspirit]

34. No...

So hey...IDEA!! Let's start screening babies at birth and eliminating any future they may have. Oh wait...that's fascism...kind of in the realm of genetic engineering.

My point is, NO, mental illness should not be used to disqualify people from anything. George Bush may be mentally ill and he IS evil. The two are not linked.

Even the idea of IQ tests borders on some kind of fascism.

...and I have a really high IQ and I too am bipolar and am old, 52. I was diagnosed long before it was the chic disease du jour.

If someone makes it far enough to run for president I suggest we use the time-honored tradition of VOTING, to pick our choice. We never complained about the electoral college until it didn't go our way. So...not REALLY a stolen election. ...and even if it was, how many times in the history of our country has it happened? Enough to dismantle what has worked so well and institute fascist little tests? I think not.

Madspirit

[ContraBass Black]

29. No more than we need literacy tests at the doors to the polling places.

I trust no man or woman, living or dead, to administer such a test.

[cynatnite]

30. Nope n/t

[Auntie Bush]

31. YES! YES! YES!

Test the bastard!

[Madspirit]

37. voter testing

Then let's test voters too. Let's restrict all running for office and all voting for it, to only the genetically pure with IQs over 180.
...and let's restrict voting to land owners and maybe a good poll tax too. Whoohoohoo mein fuhrer!
Madspirit

[Odin2005]

38. As an American with an Autism Spectrum Disorder I say ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Thomas Jefferson is thought to of had an ASD and he is one of our greatest presidents.

[porphyrian]

39. The President should be chosen through a reality/elimination show.

Each week, all of the candidates face a "Campaign Challenge," out of which one candidate or candidate team is declared the winner (tallied by running score) and one is the loser. On the two week to-be-continued finale, American citizens get to vote for their favorite finalist either by texting a code for their favorite or by calling an automated line.

More disturbing than this idea is that many who read it will like the idea.